Some writing news

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's book editor just answered a query letter of mine with a positive 'send it in'. Which means that she'll look over some book reviews of mine and *potentially* publish them in the paper.

That's a big deal to me, bigger even than the columns. The columns are, by the requirements of the job, Milwaukee themed and unlikely to sell elsewhere. A book review can be sold and resold to any market, and with a published review in the Journal I'd have a solid track record to reference.

Small money, small sucess, sure - but hopefully another step in the right direction.

I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Let it all hang out

This should make you all feel better about your day:

I went to work this morning dressed for success in a new pair of slacks, freshly polished shoes, and silk shirt. Hey, I'd enjoyed resurrecting the ol' shirt and tie for the Communion, and I wanted to carry it over to the workplace. After all, dress for the job you want, not the one you have.

At work a friend was standing on a windowsill as he tried to lower a sign that normally hangs about ten feet off the ground.

"You're an idiot. Why don't you get a ladder?" I asked.

"I don't need a #@$% ladder, that's why. Get up here and lend me a hand."

I walked beneath the sign and was able to grab a corner as he lowered it, taking some of the weight off of him. It wasn't good enough.

"Dude, get up here and hold this while I grab the wire."

Here's where catastrophe set in. I took a step up onto the windowsill and heard what my buddy later called a "cartoon sound effect".

I'd ripped my pants from the knee to my belt, leaving thigh, crotch, and ass hanging in the breeze.

Cue riotous laughter around me.

I'll say this for me: somewhere along the line, in a lifetime full of humiliation and social miscues, I lost the ability to be embarrassed by such horrific scenes. Really. I reacted with detached fatigue. I let the laughter carry on for a minute.

"Are you going to help me here, or are you going to keep staring at my ass?" I asked.

"What the hell am I supposed to do? I'm not holding that together."

"Grab me the tape a**hole."

I wrapped a few pieces of packing tape around my leg and proudly marched across a crowded store at a leisurely pace. I walked into the office, told the boss I had to leave, and strolled back the way I came, then out and across a parking lot.

Somewhere along the first leg of that trip the tape gave way, and for much of the walk I grabbed what I could and tried to muster some dignity.

Yes, I eventually returned to work. My theory was that if I failed to return I'd never live it down. As it is it was a rough shift, let me tell you.

"What did you tell people?" I asked my friend.

"Nothing. Well, Debbie asked why you left so fast."

"What did you tell her?"

He laughed. "I said you had to go home and change your pants because you had an accident."

Great. So the people who didn't see my butt now think I crapped my pants. Only to me folks, only to me.

MEG: Hell's Aquarium - Info Wanted

No, I haven't read Meg: Hell's Aquarium, I'm just looking for information.

When I saw this on the shelf at Barnes and Noble I was reminded that one of my readers won a contest to have her name appear as a character in this novel. The problem is I can't remember who that was. So if it's you, or you know the answer, let me know.

Oh, and congratulations :)

Swine Flu and Communion Wine

If nothing else the swine flu is sure creating memories for YaYa. It's the weekend of her First Communion (a mere 11 hours away now) and it's affected a score of things in Milwaukee. Knowing most kids, in twenty years time the only thing she'll remember about this weekend is that it coincided with the outbreak.

The most stunning example of its impact was at my niece's Communion Mass today. Before it began the Priest announced that, following 'suggestions' from the State and Archdiocese, the communal wine would not be offered at Mass. This was the First Communion day for dozens of kids, and they would not be receiving the wine.

Man, the shock hit my chest like a sledgehammer. I'm serious. Forgetting even the theological implications, its a massive blow to the protocol and tradition of the event. I can't come up with an equivalent example. A marriage ceremony where the exchange of rings is banned? An inauguration where the swearing-in is prohibited? A baseball game where the home team doesn't get a chance to win it in the ninth?

I'll give the Priest credit. He was a witty and charming man, and he denounced this all as paranoia. So he presented an option: the congregation wouldn't be offered the wine, but the kids receiving their First Communion would have the opportunity if the parents so chose. I don't know how many parent's vetoed it, but I'm thinking the number was zero.

Anyhow, I have no idea how YaYa's church will handle it tomorrow. We'll have to see.

* there are some nice pics from today and I'll *try* to post them at a later date*

After Mass we ditched three of the kids and took YaYa out alone to finish off some last minute Communion details. We also had some fun. We went to a rummage sale at a Methodist Church, where a lady presented YaYa with a free cross necklace in honor of her upcoming event (and I picked up a copy of Robert Penn Warren's Remember the Alamo! for less than a quarter). We also hit an estate sale, got myself a haircut, stopped at Half Price Books, and went out to eat, at YaYa's choice, at Carrabas Italian Restaurant (not a great meal for the $; we won't be going back.)

I did ask her at the bookstore if her love of books was genuine or just a means of identifying with me. She looked at me like I was crazy and pleaded with me to buy her a chapter book.

She thrives when she has alone time with us and it was a blast.

Anyhow, time for bed. Some more swine flu notes for posterity:

* Today the number of cases here has jumped from five on Friday to twenty-seven(probable) cases.

* A handful of public schools have closed, but MPS is warning all parents to make alternate arrangements for Monday. The rumor is all public schools will be closed until further notice, and the Catholic versions will follow suit.

* Some of the south-side Catholic schools with overwhelmingly Hispanic student bodies, including my old elementary school, have shut their doors.

* On Thursday night LuLu and YaYa's school was completely disinfected and sprayed down, whatever that means.

* At work a manager wasted an entire day disinfecting our computers and keyboards. This is a pointless task, given we're always mixing with the public and would have no real hope of avoiding it if it strolled through the door.

* I cleared my throat at work and a customer backed away saying "Are you sure you're not ill?". I think she was joking.

* A local store has a sign on their door saying "Avoid the swine flu - buy hand sanitizers here!"

The Bridge

Do a quick search on the net and you'll find pictures of a horrific car accident that claimed the life of a teenager in California. The pictures are real and were leaked by a California Highway Patrol officer. The family is suing the CHP, and for good reason. They they show the victims near-decapitated body as it sits in her crumpled Porche, her head nearly unrecognizable as that of a human.

I am not part of the group of people who would have leaked the photos, posted them on the dead girl's MySpace page, emailed them to her family, or posted them on a blog and captioned them with snarky commentary (all of which occurred).

But being human, with all the morbid curiosity of death that keeps my fear of it at bay, I followed a link and viewed the shots. They are revolting, but I 'x'ed out of the site more disgusted with myself than with the photographs.

The Bridge, a documentary about suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge, leaves you wondering to which group the filmmakers belong.

In 2004 The Golden Gate Bridge averaged a successful suicide attempt every fifteen days. Over the course of that year the documentary was able to capture, start to finish, several of those deadly jumps on film.

Mind you, it isn't a snuff film and the suicides themselves consume a relatively short amount of film. In the rest of the movie we're introduced to the family and friends of the deceased. We learn their stories - sometimes from childhood on - and not only try to grasp what led to that final decision but examine the impact it had on loved ones.

It is an astonishingly depressing and morbid film. I can handle that, if there was a point behind its creation. I have to assume the filmmakers went into the project believing they would honor the dead and explore the effects of suicide, and perhaps discourage someone from doing the same. They failed on all counts.

Jumping - an action one interview labels theatrical by its very nature - is made into a sad but almost poetic end to a life. While the friends who are interviewed are almost universally aghast and view the suicide, sometimes angrily, as a cop out, the family members are oddly accepting. Perhaps they are seeking to assuage their own guilt, or are worn out by a lifetime of dealing with the deceased. Either way it is disconcerting to hear a parent seemingly brush off the death of a son. One father assures his child, as they discuss his desire to die between attempts, that suicides are not judged harshly by God and that sometimes the pain of life is just too great. One woman tells her nephew only to make sure to say goodbye before he kills himself, and later tells the camera that it was an act that might have been predestined from birth. And so on.

Judge those people, don't judge, it doesn't matter; what matters is that in a film like this, whatever the reason behind their statements, it reeks of a big 'OK' for viewers to accept the idea of killing themselves.

In addition, The Bridges's focus on the Golden Gate is a farce. For the jumper there is no significance to the bridge except as a convenient means of finishing a life that would have been ended by other means in Denver or Portland. What I perceive as the true relevance of the bridge in the movie is this: it's the only place they stood a chance of capturing the act of suicide on film. Period.

I have a greater problem with the fact that these weren't abrupt, spur of the moment acts. Most of the deaths follow the same routine: they begin with a pensive, pacing individual who hesitantly climbs over the rail but then lets go with a resolute quickness.

The camera catches this all, and at some point the cameramen became very adept at spotting a future jumper. They zoom in on an individual and follow them for an astonishingly long time, even focusing in on the last horrid minutes as the jumper stand on the ledge debating his end.

There is an endless amount of time for the filmmakers to pick up a phone and alert the police to a potential jumper. The San Francisco cops certainly seem used to the task, as the film shows them questioning people that linger on the bridge.

To ID a suicidal act and sit idly by is reprehensible. This lack of action is a passive contribution to the deaths and a black mark against their artistic and literal soul.

View it and see if you feel the same way.


p.s. - I don't believe the state has a responsibility to actively safeguard it against suicide, but I do question why, if the act is so prevalent they don't stop wasting time and resources and just erect a railing higher than four feet?

Smiley at the park - Easter Sunday

After Easter dinner at my parents house the kids were divided up among the grandparents/aunts and only Smiley returned home with us. If you remember, it was sunny but cold - a winter coat but no hat day - but the sun was too good to pass up. So I took Smiley for a late afternoon adventure to a nearby park.

There were other kids and parents there at first, all visiting nearby houses for the holiday, but within a half hour or so we had the place to ourselves. Smiley had found a lost tennis ball on a nearby court and made a game of tossing it up a slide and then trying to catch it on the fly as it richocheted down the chute.











He played that game FOREVER, or at least until I told him it was time to go home. On the return trip we cut across the tennis courts and came upon an empty wire reel (I think it may have stored the newly stretched tennis nets for the winter). For no good reason other than it seemed like fun, we decided to make this our toy.



We rolled it back and forth across the court, running it into the fence at one end and the net on the other (allright, I stopped it just shy of the net to avoid damage. But only because I'm a dorky scaredy-cat.)

Quote of the Day

While we were riding home from school YaYa announced she has a new crush, and said the boy wanted to meet me.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because I told him all about you. He's just as gross as you are so he thinks you're cool. He even picks his nose like you do!"

LuLu chimed in with skepticism. "Uh, does he pick his nose with his pinky?"

"Yup," said YaYa.

LuLu laughed maniacally. "Then he is like Daddy!"

* * * *

Once again, I had my Escort back for 72 hours before it broke down again.

This time it appears to be - with the operative phrase being "appears to be" - just a cracked sparkplug wire. To answer all the cries of "Why don't any of these repair places give it a once-over?" I say: the exhaust place wasn't going to go poking around the engine, anymore than the regular mechanic could have forseen something cutting the brake lines while I drove. It's a stretch of bad luck, and I'm not going to chastise anyone for not being Edgar Cayce.

* * *

BTW, The Spirit was an awful movie, not even worth a full review. Skip it.

Cloudy X-Rays but Sunny Skies

I had some good news Tuesday. Or rather, a lack of bad news, which in this case amounts to the same thing. After taking those x-rays a few weeks back I scheduled a follow-up with my physician for mid-May. Two days later the office called and said that the doctor wanted to move the appointment up a significant amount of time. Naturally I asked why.

"I don't know sir," the receptionist said. "He just said he wanted to see you as soon as you were able."

There was more back and forth, and in the end the doc objected even to the new date and moved it up some more. These were x-rays of my back, and while I tried to remain logical, 40% of my brain was convinced they'd found either a tumor or a spot on my lungs. Other than Lisa I told no one and kept it to myself.

Tuesday I waited for an hour in the office before being seen. First things first, the doctor said the x-rays showed arthritis in my neck and throughout my back, with the worst of it in my neck. He asked if I had any pain that extended below the waist, and said if I did he would send me for an MRI and further tests.

I don't have back pain, other than the occasional ache everyone gets, and if they hadn't taken the X-rays I'd have gone twenty more years before suspecting a thing. To my mind, this was/is an irrelevant condition. I vetoed the MRI.

Then he wanted to know if I had ever experienced trauma to the region behind my forehead. That threw me. No, I replied.

"Any surgery, accident . . .anything metal? Shrapnel perhaps?"

I laughed. " Unless aliens kidnapped me and implanted something, the answer's still no. What's this about?"

The doctor looked confused. The x-rays had showed cloudy matter in that region but according to the reports it could not be identified because the shots were blocked by metal shards in my forehead.

WTF??

"Let me see that," I said, and he handed me the one page report from the hospital staff. Yup, he had the gist right. That wasn't good. I read on and was surprised to learn I had been admitted to the ER after an assault. I was even more surprised to find out I was a 24 year old female.

The doc turned red.. "I am sorry, the hospital must have left a page of this woman's report in the fax machine when they sent yours. I apologize, this is a horrible breach of privacy."

Pshff. Fine by me. Bad for the lady with the cloudy brain pic, but gravy baby for me. No need to apologize.

"So do I still have arthritis, or is that her's too?"

Sadly, no go on that. That one's all mine.

All kidding aside, it sucks to spend 40% of your time wondering if you're on the way out. Will the kids remember me? If they do, will I be some idealized notion or a real person to them? Ah, man, if Lisa remarries she'll probably get more years in with him than with me; I should at least have gotten the lion's share. Why didn't I push past the writers block and get a book published? Crap, I hope I don't die before the Lost series finale. Etc. Etc.

Knowing me all this was for naught and I'll continue treading water. But at least in theory it's inspired me to set some things right and get my ass in gear. We'll see if it sticks.

* * * * *

I took a bike ride late Tuesday. It was a cold day, but you always see hippies cruising around on such afternoons. I assumed they had discovered that your body heat keeps you comfortable in that situation. I wore a jacket as I headed out, but was convinced I'd have to shed it soon into the ride.

Bulls**t. F'ing hippies.

It was cold. Damn cold. And you know what? It feels twice as cold when you're cutting through the air at a decent speed. I was an icicle by the time I got home.

F that. I'm sticking to warm days. Period.

Great Smiley News!

The Little Man got off the school bus and ran into the house brandishing a note from his teacher. It read as follows, with each 'bold' word being underlined twice in the teacher's handwriting:

[Smiley] said his own name today correctly with the "k" sound!! (I was so happy, tears came to my eyes!) Ask him to say it for you - emphasize the "k" for him! It was an awesome day!!

Ms. Heidi

Hot dog! Way to go little guy!

You should have seen how happy and proud Smiley was with the reaction he got. Oh, it would warm your heart. What great news!

Swine Flu Forces Closure of Milwaukee Public Schools

A friend of ours just got an automated call from MPS saying her daughter's school was "closed until further notice". According to the Milwaukee Journal, four schools have been ordered closed because of swine flu, with two confirmed cases in the city and a third in the state. Details are sketchy, but I'm sure it will headline the paper tomorrow.

I don't think that the swine flu is the end of the world, or a guaranteed repeat of the 1918 Influenza horror, but it's going to cause some damage before it's through. Not only is there a case at a school down the block from my house, but at the school our friend's daughter attends. Lovely news. The stomach illness that took me, Lisa, and YaYa out for part of last week was awful enough; I can't imagine getting hit by that strain.

Let's hope for the best, and a quick recovery for those stricken with the illness.